3 Responses

StigmataStigmata is probably the apex of one of the things I personally dislike the most about the Catholic religion: the apology of pain.

People that beg God to partake of the pain Christ endured to atone for our sins; as if that was the sole reason Jesus came to the world, which I reject entirely. I think Jesus came to open our eyes to the greatest truth of all: that no matter how little and insignificant we humans are, we are in essence part of the Divinity, hence we are all brothers with no man above or below the other.

But people instead focus on the bloody end the Nazarene suffered, the fate of any revolutionary ahead of its time. And this malady endures, as I watch the poorest and most illiterate of my countrymen reenact year after year the drama of the crucifiction, in the neighborhood of Iztapalapa, where the man that is playing Jesus not only carries the heavy wooden cross, but is literally NAILED to the cross, so he can offer this pain to God to cleanse his soul.

But I guess i shouldn’t blame all this on the lack of opportunities or education, since people of higher class also fall into the trap of the apology of pain, as it is plainly clear in the numerary members of Opus Dei, who still use medieval instruments of torture to mortify their own flesh.

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It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

PainGood morning everyone,
I think we can take the ‘apology of pain’ much deeper than Catholicsm, Red. I came up with the term ‘masocology’ to highlight a common thread of human experience towards masochism.
I think it finds its roots in the simple fact that all forms of pleasure involving physical interaction lead to pain if over-indulged. Hence, in partaking pleasure, do we court a masochistic act?
If so, masochism will be constantly repeated in religious, and other, ritual. Indeed, it seems more of a problem in the west, who’s religious doctrines aim towards banning pleasure, whereas most eastern philosophies encourage indulgence in pleasure, because it is more quickly learnt how illusory it is.

InterestingI had never thought of the eastern philosophy approach as a kind of inverse-psichology shock therapy: to “heal” through over-exposure. Mmmm

But you have to admit that, referring to christianity and islam at least, sometimes it rings true what George Orwell wrote in 1984, that through negation of sexuality these churches tend to bring people in such a high-strung state (bordering on the hysterical sometimes) that they are capable of comitting any kind of act if told to. Hence people seek to “let off the steam” through the rituals and dogmas administered by the Church.

Or maybe it’s just the way the very nature of man is viewed in abrahamanic cultures: as vile and corrupt, brought from the filthy soil by the hand of God, as is portrayed in the Genesis tale. I think that in many westerners it permeates the idea (whether actively conscious or not) that men are essentially evil in nature, and only through the negation of our nature does one can hope to attain “salvation”.

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It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!